Google Beats Bing, Yandex & Blekko At Keeping Malware Out Of Search Results [Study]

About three years ago, Google was labeled in one study as the “King of Malware.” Things have apparently changed a lot since then. A new study reports that Google is beating its primary search competitors pretty significantly when it comes to keeping malware out of search results.

The 18-month study (PDF), done by a German IT security group called AV-TEST, reviewed more than 40 million web pages — the vast majority (about 38 million) coming from Google, Bing, Yandex and Blekko.

The results:

• About .0025 percent of Google’s search results were links to malicious websites.
• Blekko was next-best at about .0067 percent.
• About .012 percent of Bing’s search results were links to malicious websites — almost five times as many as Google.
• Even worse was Yandex, with about .024 of its links containing malware — twice as many as Bing, and 10 times as many as Google.

Here are the full results in chart form:

AV-TEST found that news-related search results frequently contained malicious links, due to malware developers’ focusing on breaking news topics and because “users are the least suspicious in such cases and therefore quickly click on the links provided.”

Malware-blocking software averaged a 92.5 percent detection rate in 2012, AV-TEST reports.

(tip via PC Mag)

Postscript, April 12: We’ve published a follow-up article to this story: Yandex Takes Exception To Search Malware Study.